Siren Call
Sirens blared in my neighborhood this morning, and after determining no fire was nearby I attributed the noise to the randomness of China, where jarring sounds faze no one.
Only tonight did I realize that the sirens actually did have a purpose. A friend who teaches in the coastal city of Wenzhou heard them too, and she actually went to the trouble of asking someone what they meant. She found out that the sirens commemorated the 76th anniversary of the first Japanese invasion of China, the annexation of Manchuria in 1931.
Google tells us that this commemoration is by no means unique, and in fact happens every year on the 18th of September.
I've always been struck by how differently the West and China perceive Japan. In the West, Japan is seen as a peaceful, prosperous nation and a staunch ally in the often unpredictable region of East Asia. In China, Japan is a long-time enemy still unrepentant about its role in the occupation of the country, all the while suspiciously harboring intentions of exerting hegemony over the region as a whole.
Even in China, The Beatles Rock
During my podcast interview, I recounted my first day as a teacher in China. I had arrived in Lianyungang the night before in a jet-lagged daze and ambled to my school the following morning to meet my students and observe my colleague's lesson. I walked into the classroom and faced my students- thirty Chinese teenagers sitting behind tiny wooden desks staring at me as if I had traveled to the school via spaceship.
I started introducing myself, but before long I had a request to deal with: "sing a song!" I had been told sometime before that Chinese students often ask their foreign teachers to sing but I had hoped I'd get at least a short grace period. In a moment, not knowing what to sing, I settled on "Yellow Submarine" by The Beatles. Looking back, the choice was obvious: "Yellow Submarine" is easy to sing (hell, Ringo sang it), the lyrics are relatively simple, and most importantly The Beatles were a band I reckoned my students knew and liked and whose songs I could sing without gagging.
I sang one verse and then stopped, and my students politely applauded. There- the ice was broken.
If there was ever a country The Beatles juggernaut couldn't penetrate, it would be China. After all, while Beatlemania swept the Western world, the Chinese were carrying pictures of Chairman Mao (to paraphrase John Lennon). The Beatles might have outraged Japanese traditionalists by playing the Budokan and nearly sparked a riot in the Philippines by snubbing Imelda Marcos, but they got nowhere near the Forbidden City.
Secondly, the Chinese, shall we say, are not the world's biggest rock aficionados. To be fair, there is a burgeoning indie scene (tracked by my friend Sean's site, Neocha) here on the mainland and rock is becoming more popular by the day. But as recently as three years ago my teenage students were convinced The Carpenters' "Yesterday Once More" was the West's greatest contribution to pop music. I heard myself once in Fuzhou telling a student that he was "too cool" to listen to the Backstreet Boys. A colleague, at around that time, played a Led Zeppelin song to his students and remarked that they were horrified, as if he had played a three-minute tape of jackhammering and car alarm loops.
But The Beatles, somehow, are liked in China. As they are in Mexico, Israel, Italy, Africa, India, and virtually everywhere else on the planet. Very few artists have managed this distinction without compromising their artistic integrity, and that truly is one reason why the Beatles remain so relevant nearly forty years after they broke up.
While we're on the subject of the Fab Four, here's an article about how dissing the Beatles has become fashionable among the Gen X set, a dubious thesis only partially explained. Far more interesting is the resulting comments thread, featuring amusing bickering between Baby Boomers claiming that no good music has been released since 1969 and whippersnappers defending our generation's appreciation of classic rock.
The Anti-Midas
Recently, a student of mine said during an TOEFL simulation that surfing the Internet was one of his hobbies. Curious, I asked what he liked to read. "News, blogs, politics, et cetera," he said, adding that he reads foreign sites in order to improve his English. The previous year, he had lived in Battle Creek, Michigan as a foreign exchange student, so intrigued I decided to ask him a fairly loaded question: what did he think about the Chinese firewall? For those of you unfamiliar with the term "firewall", it refers to the practice by the Chinese government of banning certain "sensitive" websites from public consumption. When one tries to load a firewalled page, a short message appears informing you that the page can not be loaded- no different from the message you get when your internet connection isn't working. The firewall affects many political sites in both English and Chinese, and is a perennial source of frustration for internet-savvy foreigners in China.
"Ah," he said when I asked him for this thoughts, "why do you Americans always want to know about this? It just isn't that big of a deal. You can always work around it."
His answer interested me for the simple reason that he made no qualitative judgment about the firewall at all. He simply chafed at being reminded of it by Americans. I wondered whether privately- or amongst other internet savvy Chinese people- he feels the same as I do about the firewall. Perhaps, but perhaps not. In any case, his response elicited two thoughts from me in trying to understand what he meant.
First, one explanation for his indifference toward the firewall is that as a Chinese person, he doesn't have the cultural understanding that free speech is an inalienable right. For example, if a group of Americans decided to meet and form a government, say on a desert island somewhere, you would expect almost all of them would agree on having elections, free speech, a free press, and the freedom of religion. These cultural values, or political values I should say, are accepted by broad swaths of the American polity.
Would a group of Chinese, if similarly stranded on an island, do the same? It could very well be that for the Chinese, social harmony and stability are core political values that trump freedom of expression and individuality. From this perspective, an internet firewall merely protects people from potentially harmful and disruptive material, and its abrogation of individual human rights are of secondary importance.
A second explanation might be what I call the "anti-Midas" effect. In a reference to the greedy king whose very touch transformed all objects into gold, could my students' reaction simply be a reflex against unwanted American criticism of China? The Chinese may share the same political values as Americans yet do not want foreigners meddling into their affairs, such as the recent Western focus on human rights. A Chinese might say to a countryman that he supports democratic reform, but he might not admit these beliefs to his American friend.
Both explanations are plausible, and I suspect the true answer combines elements from each. In any event, one cannot deny that Chinese and Americans have vastly different perspectives toward issues that might, on the surface, seem to be universal.
This belief- that American political values are universal- has been the foundation of President Bush's post 9/11 foreign policy. The Iraq War was a gamble that not only do Iraqis share American values, but they'd also welcome an occupation by said Americans who ostensibly would help them. Events in the past four years have thrown water on this proposition, but if anything, recent saber rattling toward Iran confirms that several influential people think invading Iran and installing a Western-style democracy there would be a successful mission for the reason that several Iranians are sick of the mullahs and would like a more modern political system.
If anything, recent history (and Chinese history over the past century or so) proves that while political values might be important, the desire to be free from foreign meddling seems to be the largest factor in shaping peoples perception on matters like free speech. I hope the next American President is aware of this not only in his (her?) dealings with China but with those throughout the world.
Pins and Needles
I spent much of last week battling a nasty stomach virus that finally forced a rare excursion to a Chinese hospital. Although my Chinese is better than adequate, I still prefer seeing doctors who can speak English. Dealing with sickness and health often requires precise language, and it's better to be safe than sorry.
So on the advice of a friend I took a cab to the outskirts of Kunming and visited the Richland International Hospital, one that specializes in treating foreigners. One hour later, I left with an bag full of antibiotics and various other tinctures and a wallet 75 RMB lighter. Two days later, my blessed stomach had returned to normal.
The Richland Hospital meanwhile has taken on a far more noteworthy case: a Yunnan woman will have surgery to remove some of the twenty-six sewing needles found in the inside of her body. As the LA Times article states, her x-ray indeed looks like a dart-board:
The poor woman apparently was the victim of a malevolent grandfather whose unhappiness that she was born female motivated his crude attempt to kill her as an infant. Remarkably, the woman has survived and even bore a healthy son six years ago. The grandfather, for his part, passed away a year ago.
How rare are incidents like this? Both the Chinese and Western media print stories of desperate mothers and fathers abandoning their infant daughters, or worse, yet in a country of this size the very newsworthiness of these tragedies seems to indicate that they are getting rarer. China has made some impressive strides in gender equality over the past twenty-five years, so perhaps the stigma of having a baby girl has worn off.
On the other hand, China's notorious One Child Policy has increased pressure on parents who only have one chance to reproduce. China's lopsided gender balance (119 boys to 100 girls, according to the article) could also indicate that infant gender selection still occurs quite regularly.
In the meantime, best wishes to the woman on the safe removal of the needles from her body.
Housekeeping Note 9/9
Several of you have informed me that my site loads very slowly due to the size of the photographs. I'm aware of the problem and will start fixing it today. Thanks, and if there are any other visibility issues please let me know in comments or via e-mail.
Matt About Town
Recently, I was asked to conduct a brief online interview with a site specializing in interviews of expatriates around the world. Click here to read.
In addition, yesterday I was interviewed for a podcast series featuring expats in China for At Home in China. The interview focused mainly on the travails of teaching English in China, so mostly I discussed experiences from my first two years in China. I'm told it'll be up on the site in about a month or so, and when it appears I'll remind all of you to give it a listen.
At Home in China also features an interview with an old friend of mine from Fuzhou, Ron Simms, who made several brilliantly funny video podcasts called "Black Man in China". In addition to being a vehicle for Ron's humor, the videos are a pretty interesting look at daily life in an ordinary Chinese city. Check 'em out.
Sichuan-Tibet Episode Six: Chinese Tex-Mex And The World’s Greatest Tiny Museum
It was not until I reached Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province and the last stop on my trip, that I realized how odd my trip had been. In a nation of 1.3 billion people I had managed to travel for nearly three weeks without once setting foot in a city larger than 100,000 people. Residents of sparsely populated countries may scoff, but in China, where nearly 200 cities boast over 1,000,000 people, this isn't as easy as it seems.
The rural nature of my trip ended abruptly upon my arrival in Chengdu. With a population exceeding 10 million, Chengdu is a giant even by Chinese standards. As the bus from Emei Shan dropped us off on a sidewalk near the bus station, I knew I wasn't in Kansas anymore. I jostled with locals for space on the sidewalk as vehicle after vehicle cruised by blaring their horns for no particular reason. Skyscrapers stood in every direction, street vendors sold sundries, and intermittently I heard the familiar "hoiking" noise of a man spitting on the ground near my feet. The usual urban scene in China.
A busy intersection in central Chengdu
My objective in Chengdu was clear: eat Western food, preferably something unhealthy. A portly Peace Corps volunteer on an earlier bus trip recommended a Tex-Mex grill called Peter's, and so once settled into my guesthouse I set off in search for some good fried all-American fatty grub.
I imagined Peter would be a transplanted Texan who opened his own restaurant in an attempt to cater to the many foreigners who come to Chengdu to see the pandas. I was wrong. "Peter" happened to be the English name of a local Chinese man not much older than me who happened to befriend a middle-aged Texan woman who taught him the ins and outs of tex-mex. Apparently, his business has done so well that he has opened a second restaurant in Chengdu and even one up in Beijing, all in the space of two years.
I ordered a Carlsberg beer and the chimichangas. When the food didn't arrive, I ordered a second beer and managed to preserve it long enough to wash down the Texas-sized helping I was given just moments later. Feeling gluttonous, I ordered an ice cream sundae (with whipped cream!) and gobbled that up, too.
As the waitress prepared the bill, I realized I had consumed more calories in one sitting than I had in the previous six days. My stomach, to my amazement, handled the onslaught of food better than I had expected. I was able to walk back to the guesthouse, though I had to avert my eyes at people dining al-fresco for fear that viewing food would make me nauseous. I hadn't been this full in a long time.
Back at the guesthouse I found BBC on satellite television and opened my novel, content to lie still on my bed while my great haul of the evening digested. Nothing I had done that day was remotely Chinese. But given my state of mind, that was perfectly OK. After all, if the world is becoming flat (as Thomas Friedman famously says), who am I to stop it?
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I knew the museum I was looking for was tiny (after all, that's what it was called) but I didn't think it was going to be that difficult to find. Chengdu's system of assigning street addresses would have confused Isaac Newton. After walking in circles for what seemed like hours, I finally came to my senses and asked someone for help.
"Oh, it's right next door," an elderly woman said.
Perhaps what women say about us is right, after all.
Wang's Tiny Museum has no facade. In fact, had its address not been written in a brochure I found at my guesthouse, I'd have assumed it was just another anonymous dwelling. Its owners, Mr Wang and his wife, are both elderly. Mr Wang in fact wears a hearing aid that whistles, and even its presence doesn't stop his wife from shouting at him just inches from his head. Mrs Wang, the more spry of the two, showed great interest in me. She was delighted I could speak Chinese, and asked me where I came from.
"America"
"Ooh!," she exclaimed, "very good!".
See? Not everyone hates us.
The museum was in truth just the basement of their home, in which the Wangs had spent nearly a lifetime collecting memorabilia featuring Chairman Mao. The helmsman's mug appeared everywhere in the museum: on posters, pins, in photographs alone and with other luminaries, in drawings, and even on busts no bigger than my fist. One could see Mao at various stages of his life: as a young, idealistic revolutionary, as a corpulent yet still imposing head of state, and finally as a feeble old dictator meeting the American President Nixon in the waning years of his life. A Mao drawing (which the Wangs had acquired soon after the 1949 revolution) showed the Chinese leader next to Stalin and Lenin, fellow Communist leaders whose excesses (in the case of Stalin) Mao would eventually embrace.
Mrs. Wang acted as docent, and whenever I turned away she directed my attention to yet another piece of memorabilia she wanted to show me. At various points, she and her husband would pose like prom dates for a photo, clearly enjoying having foreign guests in their museum. All of my questions- and there were many- she answered patiently. In the corner, I spotted a small photo of Deng Xiaoping, Mao's successor and the man responsible for implementing China's successful economic reforms.
"Why not have a museum for Deng?," I asked. She laughed, and walked on.
My question was mostly rhetorical. After all, there very well might be a museum dedicated to him, and I suppose if it existed a logical place would be in Chengdu, capital of Deng's own Sichuan. From a Western perspective, Deng is more worthy of veneration than the hated Mao.
Yet Mao's museum did not reflect a collection lovingly put together by an enthusiast so much as the fact that, well, there was simply a lot of Mao stuff here in China. His reign represented a cult of personality in the extreme sense: a book of his thoughts became the second most published book in history (behind the Bible). Statues more than 100 feet high adorn the central squares of many Chinese cities, even those in minority-dominated parts of the country. Posters with his smiling, corpulent mug urging revolution were ubiquitous adornments during the Cultural Revolution. Given his positive reception among gullible Western radicals, Mao's face was one of the best-known in the world. Andy Warhol, who could spot an icon better than anyone, certainly thought so.
The Chinese, for their part, have gone in an entirely different direction from the one Mao would have chosen, yet find themselves curiously unable to dismiss their former leader. In Beijing, his face adorns Tiananmen Square less than a kilometer from where a Starbucks once stood in the Forbidden City. The Chinese have embraced entepreneurship, market economics, consumerism, globalization, and cultural openness, all things Mao denounced. China has changed so fast that it's almost impossible to imagine what life must have been like here even forty years ago. As Westerners generally were kept out, few independently-made films from the Cultural Revolution days exist- the Chinese themselves certainly don't promote it and in fact have discouraged artistic representation of those miserable days. As such, a time period that shook China to its core seems to exist only in the memories of its survivors, many of whom only reluctantly raise the subject with outsiders.
So what made Wang's museum remarkable, to me, weren't the rare items in his collection but rather the common ones. I found posters and the little red book and gold pins all equally fascinating, as they would have been as banal then as the Golden Arches sign is now.
Before I left, Mrs. Wang asked me to sign the guestbook. As I did, I noticed I was hardly the first foreigner to have visited the place. In fact, I wondered just how many managed to squeeze in a visit to both the museum and to Pete's Tex-Mex grill on the same visit to Chengdu.